Rio de Janeiro, Jan 25: More than 220,000 Olympic tickets were sold during the first two days of the last major sales phase for Brazilian residents.

The most sought after tickets were for athletics, swimming, football, handball, the opening and closing ceremonies, basketball, volleyball, beach volleyball, tennis, judo and gymnastics, reports Xinhua.

"About 500,000 tickets became available and the demand was intense, with peaks of more than 3,000 transactions per minute," Rio 2016 organisers said on Sunday (January 24).

Locals can buy tickets from the Rio 2016 tickets website while non-Brazilian residents can make purchases via authorised ticket resellers in their regions. More tickets are expected to become available to Brazilian residents through the ticket resale programme launched in October.

Rio Olympics will be held from August 5 to 21.

IANS